What’s Loud, Unnecessary, and Costs $75 Million?
And now for a riddle: What is big, loud, unnecessary, and costs $75 million? No, not a retired elephant in a diamond-studded dress: The answer is, of course, a Group of 20 summit.
Ctrl-Alt-Diplomacy
Press the reset button. Is there any phrase more enticing in the modern lexicon? We all know what it means: Press the reset button, watch your computer reboot, and presto! A nice, clean screen appears, and you start again from scratch.
Cleanup Task for a Shining City
“America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” – Ronald Reagan, 1974, echoing John Winthrop, 1630 – From the earliest days of our republic, Americans have been drawn to the idea of their nation as different, exceptional, an example for others. Sometimes that view has been shared by …
European Disunion
“Crisis Threatens the Idea of One Europe.” “Members Sharply Split Over Economic Action.” “Europe’s Family Squabbles.” Reading the headlines in recent days, one would be tempted to conclude that the European Union, which has so long promulgated an earnest ideology of ever-closer, ever-greater European economic cooperation, is in trouble — and one would be right.
How to Speak Human Rights
“We pretty much know what they’re going to say.” — Hillary Clinton, on the Chinese reaction to discussions of human rights, religious freedom and Tibet
Witless Protection
Some think the New Deal rescued America from economic crisis in the 1930s. Others argue the opposite. But whatever their ideology, and whatever their credentials, most of the pundits, historians and economists who debate the Great Depression agree about one thing: Whatever may have caused the crisis, protectionism, trade barriers and, yes, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, helped …
The Only ‘Surge’ That Will Last
President Obama wants to send 30,000 American soldiers; the Germans have promised more money; the Poles have just taken charge of a province; even the Dutch are thinking of keeping some troops on the ground. Which is all very well, as long as they all realize that the long-term solution to Afghanistan’s security doesn’t lie in …
Relearning How To Weather a Storm
This column is arriving late this week. It is arriving late because, among other things, my flight out of London’s Heathrow Airport on Monday was canceled. Not delayed, canceled. So were almost all the other flights out of Heathrow. This stunning disruption at one of the world’s busiest transport hubs was not caused by a …
Democracy They Can’t Imagine
You’ve probably heard stories of swooning foreign reporters, breathless international coverage, fawning headlines in many languages — and I can confirm that, yes, it’s all true.
President Barack Obama reaches out to all nations with vow to ‘remake America’
A friend emailed Tuesday morning from New York: “In tears already and it hasn’t begun.” Another wrote me that her husband, horrified by reports of crowds in Washington, was “afraid there will be a stampede or something awful”. Which summed it up, really: the levels of emotion built up in advance of the 2009 presidential …
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